Now that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dispatched Israeli ground troops into Gaza, he has one priority: accomplishing the mission.

This means destroying the network of underground tunnels Hamas uses to sneak its operatives into Israel for terrorist attacks. It also means depriving Hamas of the rockets it is firing into Israel.

President Obama recognizes Israel’s right to defend itself but has cautioned Netanyahu to act “in a way that minimizes civilian casualties.” We’ll leave aside that this is already standard Israeli policy. If it weren’t, Gaza would have been flattened by now.

The tunnels cannot be ignored. Just last week, 13 Hamas terrorists were nabbed a short distance from an Israeli kibbutz after they’d infiltrated the country via a tunnel.

The limits of air power, Netanyahu says, means “we cannot solve the issues of the tunnels from the air alone.” Especially when you hope to limit harm to civilians.

Hamas suffers no such scruples.

It aims its rockets at Israeli neighborhoods, and it protects its own weapons by keeping them in places — near hospitals, apartment buildings, etc. — where any Israeli effort to get at them will mean innocent Palestinians caught in the crossfire.

Hamas does this because it is banking on the propaganda value of dead Palestinian innocents, in a macabre bid for international sympathy.

The way to improve life for innocent Israelis and Palestinians alike is not to tell the Israelis what they can and cannot do to defend themselves.

It is to support them as they eliminate the weapons Hamas fires at innocent Israelis — and uses its own citizens as human shields to protect.